Use and adapt the press release below to let local media know about your support for the Caravan! Send a copy to
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For immediate release[Date], 2012Contact: In [Your city]:[Your Name], [telephone number]or in Washington, DC: Hendrik Voss, 202-425-5128,
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A Trans-border Caravan for Peace and Justice

YOUR CITY – Human rights activists from [your city], [state], will gather at [give location and day and time of event] to join the Peace Caravan initiated by the Mexican Movement for Peace with Dignity and Justice, which is touring the country with the slogan “End the War – No More Violence”.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in drug violence in Mexico in the last few years. 10,000 people have been disappeared and over 1 million displaced. Starting in August, a high profile caravan will cross the US starting in San Diego/Los Angeles, heading east along the US-Mexico border and then up to Chicago, New York and DC to reach out to a broad audience and build momentum for its goals of pushing open the debate on drug regulation/legalization, challenging policies that facilitate massive arms smuggling from the US to Mexico, and ending US support for the militarization of the drug war within Mexico.

“[insert quote from local organizer about why you are mobilizing],” says [name and title], a supporter of the caravan.

Perpetrators of the violence on both sides of this declared "war" have strong links to the US School of the Americas/WHINSEC, a U.S. taxpayer-funded military training school for Latin American soldiers, located at Fort Benning, Georgia. Ciudad Juarez Police Chief, Julian Leyzaola Perez, a graduate of the SOA, has been accused by human rights groups of direct participation "in the torture of individuals who were arbitrarily detained, transported to military bases, and subjected to beatings, electric shocks, death threats, and asphyxiation to obtain false confessions" (UNHCR report). On the side of the drug cartels, a third of the original members of the drug cartel known as the “Zetas” are deserted members of the Mexican military who have graduated from the SOA/WHINSEC. Thousands are expected to mobilize this Novemeber in Fort Benning, GA, to protest the SOA/WHINSEC.

Led by Javier Sicilia, the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity has made “End the Drug War- No More Violence” campaign a priority. Sicilia’s son, Juan Francisco was murdered along with six friends in March of 2011. He has since become an inspirational voice for peace, justice and reform– drawing huge crowds throughout Mexico. He comes north this summer with a call for change in the bi-national policies that have inflamed a six-year Drug War, super-empowered organized crime, corrupted Mexico’s vulnerable democracy, claimed lives and devastated human rights on both sides of the border.